Memoirs of Puerto Rican combatants

The Puerto Rican newspapers El Mundo and El Imparcial interviewed some of the volunteers who returned from the Civil War. They also published accounts other Puerto Ricans sent from the battlefield. A few years after the war ended, three Puerto Ricans published their memoirs and combat experiences whose proximity in time to the conflict makes them testimonies of great value.

The journalist and militiaman José Enamorado Cuesta sent three “Chronicles” from the battlefield to El Mundo, offering Puerto Rican readers the opportunity to learn about a perspective other than the pro-Franco narrative predominant in the press. In his chronicles (27 and 31 August and 31 October 1936), he recounted the events of the military uprising in the barracks of Melilla and Madrid, events in the Sierra de Guadarrama, and his participation in the fall of the Montaña Barracks.

Rubén Gotay Montalvo narrated his experiences in Madrid and in the battles of Jarama, Guadalajara, Brunete, Aragón, and Teruel in the book While the Bonfire Burns: Notes of a War Correspondent (1939) shown here. Gotay was a law student in Madrid when the military uprising occurred. He served as a was correspondent in the 11th Division of the People’s Army of the Republic, under the command of Enrique Líster. He returned to Puerto Rico in August 1938.

Journalist Antonio Pacheco Padró published his war memoirs in I Come from Jarama: Glories and Horrors of the War in 1942. He fought with the American Lincoln Battalion in the Battle of Jarama, where he was wounded in combat. After recovering in Barcelona, he rejoined as a political commissar and liaison officer on the staff of the 46th Division, under the command of Valentín González, El Campesino. His account of his participation in the Battle of Jarama is extraordinary, insightful, and valuable for its rawness and truthfulness. He returned to New York in September 1937.

In 1945, the poet and journalist Emilio R. Delgado published the account of his escape from Spain to France under the title “How I Escaped Francoist Spain” in the Puerto Rican magazine Florete. Delgado was living in Madrid when the military uprising occurred. He was a war correspondent, editor, and director of the Republican newspapers Ahora, Nuestra Bandera, and Mundo Obrero. In the days leading up to the fall of Madrid, he defended the Mundo Obrero offices with a rifle in hand. Threatened with death and hunted throughout Spain, he fled Madrid but was arrested by the Falangists in Alicante. He managed to escape, cross into France, and eventually reach New York.

JA/TTR